“Sounds like you were pretty into that song. I can put you back on hold,” she offered, but I declined. She giggled and admitted to doing the same thing when she was on hold.
She told me that the Redding Harbor Lighthouse’s power had been shut off in 1988 and it hadn’t operated since.
“Wait,” I said. “So the power could be restored?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “If somebody approved turning it on again.”
I did have a rich history of trying to negotiate with the utilities company. But, really, who among us has been successful in that endeavor? Certainly not I. With my credit history, my power had been shut off so often, at times the view from across the street would resemble that of a strobe light—off and on, off and on, with blinding repetition.
But Brenda and I had a connection. We’d bonded over my rendition of “Because the Night (Belongs to Us),” so surely she’d help out a fellow on-hold crooner. I just wasn’t sure what the best way to go about asking was.
“That is very interesting,” I said.
“I guess,” she said in a singsong, and exhaled—waiting to see if I was going to say anything else. There was a lull in the conversation, and while I can appreciate those quiet unspoken moments as much as the next person, Brenda may not have.
“Very, very interesting,” I repeated, trying to fill up the emptiness.
“So, um . . .”
“Jordan,” I said, finishing her sentence and trying to make things more personal.
“Yes, okay, Jordan, is there anything else I can help you with?”
“As a matter of fact there is,” I said, finally mustering up the confidence to ask.
* * * * *
If you didn’t factor in that I’d be out at the edge of the earth as I knew it, alone at a deserted lighthouse in an area with no cell service, and the very distinct possibility that Travis wouldn’t even come, there was nothing wrong with the idea.
Of course, Cat and Todd disagreed.
“I don’t like the idea of you all alone out there,” Todd said warily.
“Alone isn’t the worst thing I could be,” I said.
“It’s really romantic and all, but don’t you think it’s kind of extreme?” Cat asked gently.
“It is extreme. Yes,” I said.
“So we all agree on that,” Todd chimed in.
“He needs to meet me,” I said.
“He can’t meet you if he doesn’t know when and where he’s supposed to be,” Cat said.
They weren’t getting it. “Not that kind of meet,” I explained. “Meet me. Meet this version of me. He’s known me when I was faking who I was, which is closer to who I am—but too contrarian and too caffeinated—and he’s known me when I didn’t know who I was, which is mildly embarrassing, but he hasn’t ever met the real me.”
“Have any of us?” Todd said. “How many versions of you are there, by the way? Is this your final answer or is there going to be a new version in the coming weeks?”
“Maybe,” I said. Todd threw his hands up in the air and Cat sighed dramatically. “But nothing crazy,” I reassured. “I just mean that I’ll be the best version of me I can be. I may change . . . but hopefully only for the better.”
“Like a go-go dancer you?” Todd asked hopefully.
“I’ll let that go,” I said. “I didn’t even really know who I was until now. And, yeah, I made mistakes, and it was pretty awful at times . . . but they say the most painful times bring on the most personal growth.”
“My older brother used to beat the hell out of me all the time,” Todd said, “and I must admit, it did grow . . . tiresome.”
“Point is,” I said, ignoring Todd, “I want the chance to show Travis who I am. To see if we have a chance. Without any lies or lawsuits or hospitals. And we may not. But the old Jordan wouldn’t have ever done something like this. She’d have accepted that she made too many mistakes and she deserved to suffer for it. I’m not her anymore. Can you guys back me up on this?”
“Of course,” Cat said. “Go get him.”
Todd was silent. He took a long deep breath and exhaled. Then he finally spoke. “Fine. Go for it. Of course, I just want you to be happy. But remember one thing. You sang ‘Close to You’ with Dirk in public and without any irony . . . and I will never let you live that down.”
* * * * *
The train ride out to Redding Harbor isn’t exactly short. It’s at pretty much the outermost tip of the island—as far as you can go, and that kind of alone time lets you run through only so many songs on your iPod before you have to confront what’s going on a little farther between the ears.
There was a little boy sitting next to his mother—sneakers untied, scrawny legs dangling—his hands covering his eyes. They were playing peekaboo. He’d cover his eyes and say, “Where’s Mommy?” and then remove his hands and giggle at the excitement of finding her again.
I hated peekaboo when I was little. The only game I hated more was hide-and-seek—probably based on the same reasons. In peekaboo, there’s an element of momentary fear. Where is your mother? And then relief. Ah . . . there she is. I never felt comfortable, because I never had the faith that she’d definitely, for sure, without a doubt, be there when I opened my eyes. So I cheated. When I played peekaboo, I always peeked through the cracks in my fingers to make sure nobody pulled a fast one and ditched me. Technically it was called peekaboo, so my logical defense would be that I thought peek meant “peek.”
Hide-and-seek was another matter entirely. I hated it because I never felt worthy of being found. And I was always scared that if I picked too tough a hiding spot, they’d just give up and go about the rest of their day—leaving me tucked away in some dark place, wondering if the game was still going on. So I always picked an easy spot. I picked such lame hiding spots that I may as well have just stood there out in plain view wearing a sandwich board. I didn’t know why I did what I did at the time, but suddenly I understood it better—I understood myself better.
And in essence, there was a certain element of hide-and-seek to my having faked amnesia and even getting it for real. The first time, I was hiding who I was. Hiding the person I’d grown ashamed of from everyone, and also from myself. I didn’t like who I’d become and I didn’t necessarily want anyone to find the old Jordan, but I did want them to find the new-and-improved one in her place. Consciously, the first time, and unconsciously the second. Both times—not feeling proud of what I’d done and who I was.
But this time I wasn’t hiding—in fact I was doing the exact opposite. I was trying with all my might to be found. I was about to try shining the brightest, most intense, dazzling, blazing light in an effort to signal my not-so-hiding spot.
I was doing what sEra the bartender had described to me—jumping without a net and having faith that the net would appear. The net being Travis. And there certainly were unanswered questions—his being married being the biggest question—but in my amnesiac state he’d promised that there were explanations, and I trusted that there were. I just had to get him to trust me enough to explain. More important, I needed him to just show up.
* * * * *
The lighthouse was dark when I rolled up in the rental car I’d appropriated for the second part of the trip (no small feat when you have no credit card) on the chosen Saturday afternoon. As I approached it, I saw for the first time how rundown and forlorn the place looked. If part of the lighthouse cliché is desolation, then Travis’s beacon fit the bill.
Because he’d been there to guide me the first time I’d come, and I was so focused on him, I hadn’t seen the crumbling foundation, peeling paint, shattered windows, and the twisted mass of thistle, sickly juniper, and exhausted vines creeping around the place. It looked beaten. And as I pushed hard against the door and practically fell into the cold and stony emptiness of the ground-level vestibule, I felt a chill of doubt and defeat too.
I don’t know why I expected it to be lit when I got there, but my breath grew short and m
y heart sped up as I climbed the stairs. In my turbulent emotional state, it didn’t occur to me that, in addition to neglecting every friendship, working relationship, financial relationship. and basic code of decent human behavior during my bouts of amnesia, I’d also neglected to hit the gym. I was terribly out of shape and now losing faith in the project, which began to take on the proportions of a harebrained scheme in my now-memory-besotted brain. I told myself that it would of course be dark until someone physically turned it on—but I still had a lingering fear that maybe my impassioned plea for a one-week electricity window had been finally met with a yes only to get the crazy girl off the phone. And not because I’d told her she could indeed save my life with the flip of a switch.
It turned out not to be as simple as that, of course, but not as convoluted as you might imagine. The service restoration took a week, and beyond that, I was on my own. After a few calls I’d learned the location and operation of the main circuit breaker and lantern room switches. As these things go, the lamp was of a fairly recent vintage, and after a few trips up and down the stairs, peering into the box, poking around the controls, following directions in the manual I’d pieced together, everything seemed to be in order.
Sure enough, when I got to the lantern room and prepared to be dazzled, the lamp wouldn’t turn on. Perfect, I thought. More punishment. I messed with it for a few minutes, trying to get it to illuminate, and I began to realize at last that I was no longer the Jordan who’d faked amnesia, and certainly not the one who’d had amnesia. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I was okay with whatever the outcome would be. I could recognize my part in all the mess I’d created and I was actually proud of myself for simply taking the action. I had no control over the result. I had no control over anything.
And I believe it was as soon as I really accepted that in my heart—well, maybe not as soon as that, more like a good while later actually, because I struggled with the giant lightbulb for a long time, but it’s a lovely metaphor—that the light sprang to life. It glowed low and timidly for a moment, then despite the accretion of dust and grime on the outer surface of the lens, it became a blazing brightness so intense that I half thought it would wash me over the railing and out to sea.
Now, I’m not saying it turned on by itself—I gave it one last shove, but it worked. And I laughed a laugh of idiot joy and held my open palms up to the blaring beacon. Acceptance? Was that what I’d been lacking all along? So if I accepted that I’d never lose those last ten pounds, would they suddenly come off too? Maybe? Maybe not (but it was worth a shot).
Reading material is crucial in times of waiting, e.g., doctors’ offices, airports, train stations, any situation where you’re in an extreme rush or anxious for something to happen. And this qualified as one of those instances where I wished time would compress, as in the nature shows where a germinating seed becomes a blooming flower in five or six seconds. But I was destined to watch for Travis at the pace of grass growing. In my mad dash to get out to the lighthouse, I’d neglected to bring anything with me. (And, yes, I accepted that I had no reading material, and, no, a book did not magically appear.)
So after my first several minutes of joy and wonder turned to simple pondering and then to borderline despair, I paced. I paced and I thought. And I sang. And I sat on the floor. And I tidied up the place a bit. I did jumping jacks. And then marked off the tower one foot at a time, counting how many steps it took to get all the way around. And I did one handstand. And I paced some more. I was bored. But I wasn’t giving up.
It started to rain. I wondered what it was like to be on a boat in the rain. I pictured Travis on one of the many boats out in the distant harbor—reading or doing whatever he did . . . and then looking out the window and spotting the lighthouse. Lit. I pictured it about a thousand different times and a thousand different ways before I realized how late it really was and that maybe he wasn’t even on the boat. Or maybe his boat wasn’t in that harbor anymore. And maybe this was a really, really bad idea.
I stepped tentatively onto the deck, which was worn and warped with age and slippery from the rain, and found a new area to pace. I didn’t mind getting rained on. It felt good—cleansing—until it started to really pour. Then it was just miserable. Thick gray fog had settled all around, so I could see less and less. It felt like I was crying, but maybe it was just misery, hopelessness, and night closing in.
And then I heard a car. In the mist, I saw uncertain headlight beams and what appeared to be a beat-up pickup truck rounding the curve on the little jutting promontory that held the lighthouse. It stopped a distance away. Then someone opened the door. And my heart, wanting to see, made its best effort to leap out of my chest by way of my throat.
I couldn’t make out if it was him or not but it was someone, in a desolate area with not a whole lot to do, and the chances of that someone being Travis were pretty excellent. I got so excited, I ran to the railing to get a better look. And I slipped.
It happened so fast that I couldn’t stop myself. I felt my legs shoot forward and then the rotted outer edge of the platform gave way beneath my feet, and a pain soared through my thigh muscle as it stretched beyond my only semi-athletic reach. I slid down and banged my two elbows on the battered rail, then the adrenaline tensed my arms and curled my hands into claws, and the next thing I knew I was dangling from the lower ring of railing. I felt intense pain in my legs and arms and the unmistakable chill of blood flowing somewhere, but something else bothered me more. What if it wasn’t even Travis down there but some local stranger instead, oblivious to me hanging up here, just out for a stroll or curious about why the lighthouse had sprung to life?
This is some high irony, I thought. The girl who’d tried to escape herself was about to vanish permanently. I’m going to fall and die on these rocks and nobody will know. Maybe it’s a fitting end. Maybe I deserve it.
“Jesus!” I heard someone scream. And I couldn’t help wondering if that was it. If I’d missed the dying part and gone straight to the afterlife. After all, apparently Jesus was already there.
I certainly couldn’t look down to confirm. I was bruised, bleeding, terrified, hanging on to a rain-slicked, rust-encrusted metal railing that seemed poised to give way with just a little encouragement from me. The platform was at the back of my head, and my legs dangled free. When I tentatively pulled on the rail to hoist myself, it creaked and sagged. So I closed my eyes and felt the pain leaving my arms, taking my grip with it. Then my savior screamed again, but the voice was close enough to touch me. “Jordan!”
And his hands did touch me—or grabbed me by the arms, and I looked up, and it was Travis.
His fingers vise-gripped me below the elbows, and as the grip pinched I yelped loudly, but he pressed forward, or more precisely fell backward as he too slipped, and we tumbled onto the deck.
“Hi,” I said.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing hanging around a place like this?” he asked.
“I thought I saw you . . . I saw someone. I got excited. I was just trying to get a better look.”
“Next time don’t be so excited to see me,” he said, standing up but not letting go of me.
I chewed on my bottom lip while I tried to find the right words to say.
“Is it you?” he asked. “I mean, the you I knew before the amnesia?” Then he cleared his throat. “The real thing?”
“I got my memory back, yes,” I said, feeling ashamed but relieved that at least he was smiling.
“You’re all wet,” he said.
“It’s not so bad,” I said, barely audible through my chattering teeth. He took his jacket off and put it around my shoulders.
“I guess pneumonia beats falling to your death.” He looked into the lantern room at the light. “You did this?”
“It’s what it’s for, right? For people lost at sea to find their way home?”
“Or to keep them from getting too close to trouble,” he said, staring at me. “But it didn’t work. I follow
ed it right to you.”
“I was hoping you’d see the—” I said, but I realized what I was about to say.
“The light?” he inserted. We nodded together, and he smiled a mocking smile. “But it’s a remarkable feat. Unbelievable almost.”
Travis glanced around as though a stranger to the place. “Honestly, I don’t think I’d ever have come back if I hadn’t heard someone say the old lighthouse was signaling again.”
I turned to him. “But I thought bringing it back to life was your dream.”
He smiled and sighed. “I woke up. Like you did. The memories here . . . they’re vivid and important to me, but this wasn’t a happy place. My father . . . he lived under the spell of the isolation, like a prisoner of his own past here. He pretty much ignored my mother for years and withdrew into himself. And he died alone. In a way, I was trying to fix that somehow, return it to its glory for him.”
“It was a nice dream,” I said quietly.
“The way I honor him is by breaking with this sad, beautiful thing,” he said, running his hand along the low masonry wall encircling the lantern room. “Maybe it’s a project for someone else. I’ll bring the memories along. To the East Village. Maybe the Lower East Side.”
“You’re moving?”
“Opening a restaurant,” he said, and now his smile was lighter. “When I look back on my past, I want to see more than this place.”
He took a step closer to me and I thought for a split second he was about to kiss me, but he stopped himself. “How was the wedding?”
I held up my left hand to show that there was no ring. “Didn’t happen,” I said. “Although I came uncomfortably close. I guess I should ask you the same question?”
“Right,” he said, and didn’t look down or away or anywhere but in my eyes. “My marriage.”
Forget About It Page 36